Shrek 3 - 2nd Summer Sequel of the year that failed!

• Prince Charming arrives late to the castle where the princess was captive for so long. All he finds is a Wolf reading swimsuit edition of "Pork Illustrated" with a pig posing in bikini on the cover!
• Puss-in-boots -- in a clear reference to Garfield -- blurts out "I hate Mondays" after his first drink in the bar!
• The "Far Far Away" -- including the sign on the hills -- is very Hollywood where they have "Farbucks Coffee" shop exactly opposite another "Farbucks Coffee" on the other side of the road!
• Fiona's mom is shown reading "King are from Mars, Queens are from Venus"!
• There was a poster of "Sir Justin" (Timberlake) right above Fiona's bed. Cameron Diaz -- voice of Fiona -- was dating Justin that time!
• Some shops in "Far Far Away" - 'Burger Prince'; 'Baskin Robinhood', 'Saxon Fifth Avenue' ...
• Giant Gingerbread utters "Be Good" as melting away, same last words uttered by E.T.!
• Puss in boots grabs his hat a.la. Indiana Jones during a chase scene.
• In "Far Far Away" a movie theater is playing "Lethal Arrow 4"
• A lot and lot of pop-culture, movie, personality references I -- and bunch of other fans -- are still trying to find out.

Hold on! All the above are from the "Shrek 2". There is no need to watch "Shrek 3" again to find out the references - especially those not so subtle ones - because there is none!

Shrek had a severe identity crisis in the first movie (that basically mimicked then Disney chief Mike Aisner), fell in love too. In the second, he visits his in-laws and tries to be as social as a green ogre can be. Third, the wife wants a kid, Shrek does not even get the hint. He does not want to be the king after his dad-in-law's death either. He wants to go back to his swamp and be happy with his smelly self. Such a big comic opportunity was entirely wasted by trying to retell all the fairy tales listed on Wikipedia. Retell is the key word -- not mimic. There are just so many characters -- most of whom you must have encountered decades ago, if at all -- that following them makes the grin vanish!

There is this new trend to make the fairy tales "hip", and there were some good movies -- just plain good, nothing more -- made in last couple of years on that premise. "Hoodwinked" - where the little Red riding hood plays a Miss Marple - being a personal favorite of the genre. However, "Shrek" was much more than parodying fairy tales. Following the mandatory Hollywood arithmetic to swamp the market with a sequel till there's a flop one in the series, the producers took the franchise too seriously this time and frustrated fans like this reviewer to no end.

Don't go green this summer!